Creepy Contacts
I should have known something would go wrong at some point! Dylan has been so good and so consistent with his contacts until now that I should have been suspicious, nothing is ever that easy.
At the weekend at EMDAC he was playing in the practise ring with me and he was abruptly very slow and stalky on the downplank of his Aframe and Dogwalk. I did think it might have been the rain; he’s a cautious boy and he hasn’t worked on equipment in the rain before, so it was a bit more slippy than he’s used to. But at training again on Tuesday he was still creeping!
I’ll admit I’m stumped. Kim has never been a creepy creepy dog. Kim’s style was always to launch herself wildly from the highest point, which presents whole other training challenges. Mollie’s style is just to run and hope that eventually you give her a ball, which sometimes includes the reckless leaping but mostly just involves running. So Dylan’s creepiness is a new one for me, and I’m not sure what to do. He is hitting his 2o2o perfectly, and I don’t know how to reward the 2o2o without rewarding the creeping.
We tried a variety of things at training. I tried throwing the toy as he was coming down the downplank, which slowed him down. Great proofing for the contact though! I tried having someone calling him down, which kind of worked but not really because he was looking to me for direction and pretty much ignoring the other person. Again, great that he isn’t getting distracted by the person shouting him but not so great with the creeping, which didn’t go away. I also tried playing tuggy with him on the contact, which did speed up the creeping but it was still creeping, which I’m not happy about.
The general concensus on RuffDogs was to try doing some quick releases with him, which I will try but I’m worried about losing the 2o2o, and apart from that everyone was equally as stumped as me. I’m also going to try lowering the Aframe to see if that encourages him to stride out a bit more, and probably go back to food rewards on the contacts rather than a play after the release. If anybody has any other suggestions I’d be very appreciative!
4 Comments
saintlover
Hi Leanne.. it’s been awhile since I have been on your site. WOW has it changed! I LOVE it! You’ve done such a great job with it.
Vicki aka Giruff
Are you sure Inca and Dyl arent related? LOL
How was Dyl taught the contacts? If you used a target it might be worth going back to that. Perhaps if he can see it it might drive him on a bit.
I’ve been working on a similar problem with Inca. Shes very consistent with her contacts but she does tend to get to the top and come down more slowly. At shows she seems to stop and have a look around before coming down which annoys the hell out of me, although I am grateful she is consistent and just hope speed will come with time and confidence.
What I’ve been doing at Wendys is really driving Inca on and doing a variety of different things. Sometimes its winding her up before the contact. One of us will hold her collar and say ‘ready steady..’ and get her excited; if Wendy holds her collar then I’ll run on encouraging her on. Sometimes I’ll run with her, other times Wendy will appear at the end of a contact and call her and then treat her at the bottom.
I have a contact trainer at home in the garden which I use and shes fine on that. I do find she works better for a ball rather than food though.
I guess it might just be a case of having a play and seeing what works best for Dyl.
Leanne
I didn’t use a target with Dylan, he was back-chained with a clicker. Up until now I’ve had no problems with him driving on to his 2o2o, but winding him up before the contact might be a good one to try, I’ll give that a go.
Kim used to stop and go framegazing, she would happily stay up there all day! Her problem was that she didn’t want to stop at the bottom, and the only way to get her down was to let her run, and she knew it. Her running Aframe was born out of sheer desperation, I figured if I just let her run it was better to get 5f for missing the contacts rather than 15 time faults! Luckily she has a 99.99% running contact these days so it did work out.
I think Inca and Dylan must have secret relatives somewhere, they have some weirdly similar traits!
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